I have been baking for friends and family and suddenly I have been asked by many friends of friends for cakes. In my state you cant do cakes from home. I dont have the $$ or credit or guts to jump into opening my own business. I checked with a few churches in the area to rent kitchens but majority are $25.00 per hour. I know that the rent will range by the state and area that you are in but are there any CC'ers out there that rent from a kitchen by the hour and what do you typically pay for rent. Then in turn, what do you charge to recover your $ and make it worth it?

THanks

Kim

I am lucky to have found a place for $10/hour.

Question...when you rent by the hour....Are you baking only??? Where do you decorate? I couldn't rent to bake and decorate it takes me forever to decorate a cake.

Yeah, that is what sux about renting by the hour! If you find that it's costing too much money and that you're too busy, you're better off renting your own space. But then you're paying whether you're using it or not! The bad part in my situation is that these guys only let me in when they are there. Their hours are only 3-8! So... pretty much, you know what I'm doing much of the time.......................

I was paying $10/hr but the lady I'm renting from was nice enough to lower it to $5/hour, since I've become busier. Or I have the choice to pay for the week (24/7 use) at a price of $106.75.

On wedding cakes I usually pay the weekly amount. On celebration cakes I pay hourly.

Paying an hourly amount is teaching me how to be more efficient with my time, no dilly-dally-ing. I'm going to start making all of the cakes and icing for the month at the beginning. Then I just have to decorate. I think it will be more time efficient. It really is a good practice to learn because the faster you are (with good quality) the more business you can take on.

I found a kitchen here that charges the following:

$25 an hr
$100 for 4-8 hrs
$300 a month for once a week for 8-10 hrs

I am in Florida and we can not bake out of home either.

The lady was explaining to me that I can prep a lot from home as well as assembly. she said if i mix wet and dry things, that is cosidered cooking.

So I can use her to bake the cakes, make the buttercream and any other fillings. Then, I could always assemble at home. So what I will be doing is making enough buttercream to freeze and use again later.... then do my baking there.

I havent done it yet... that is just an option for me... hope ot have helped.

You can do the prep work and assembly at home but it is NOT legal.

If, somehow, the health department found out you were doing that you would get in trouble.

Technically all of your tools and supplies must stay in the commercial kitchen as well.

Holy cow... i totally did not know that!

So it all has to be done in the kitchen? wow. I was trying to help and learned something in the process!! ^_^

Yeah I wasn't aware of that either and then I was informed. So now I do everything at the bakery.

At first it was kind of crappy because I was having to pay a lot of my profit to rent. But then I relized that is what people that actually own a bakery have to do. So I just learned to work quicker and more efficiently. I have also learned to price correctly for my cakes. If the cake is going to be priced at $50 dollars then I need to be able to finish it within 3-4 hours ($15-$20).